From a front-page New York Times article about American plans to launch a military attack on Syria:
Mr. Obama's rationale for a strike creates a parallel dilemma to the one that President George W. Bush confronted 10 years ago, when he decided to enter into a far broader war with nearly 150,000 American troops in Iraq without seeking an authorizing resolution in the United Nations. The Obama administration says that case differs sharply from its objectives in Syria.
In Iraq Mr. Bush was explicitly seeking regime change. In this case, White House officials argue, Mr. Obama is trying to enforce an international ban on chemical weapons and seeking to prevent their use in Syria, or against American allies.
This is attributed — "The Obama administration says," "White House officials argue" — but it's a false distinction nonetheless to say that "Mr. Bush was explicitly seeking regime change" in contrast to Mr. Obama. As context, the Times might have recalled Mr. Obama's August 2011 statement:
The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. His calls for dialogue and reform have rung hollow while he is imprisoning, torturing, and slaughtering his own people. We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.
Maybe the difference between Bush and Obama is that Mr. Bush actually caused a regime change while Mr. Obama called for one two years ago and, instead of acting to cause the regime change, has instead stood by and allowed tens of thousands of innocent Syrian civilians to be slaughtered, some of them with chemical weapons, by the very dictator he called on to step aside. But the difference isn't that one of the two presidents was explicitly seeking regime change and the other was not. The difference is that one of them did something about it while the other announced the goal and then did little to accomplish it.
It may be that what the Times is attempting to communicate is that Mr. Bush's Iraq war was designed to unseat Saddam, while Mr. Obama's Syria action is designed to leave Bashar Assad in power — what "one U.S. official" described to the L.A. Times (as noticed by Jeffrey Goldberg) as an action "just muscular enough not to get mocked." If that is so, it would be nice to see some coverage in the Times of why Mr. Obama, if he is going to bother with military action against Syria at all, has decided to stop short of enforcing his August 2011 statement. Has he changed his mind on whether the time has come for President Assad to step aside? Or was the time two years ago, but not now? If the point is that Mr. Assad's use of chemical weapons makes Mr. Obama look foolish, doesn't his endurance in office two years after Mr. Obama said it was time for him to step aside also make Mr. Obama look foolish? And if the military action is the punishment for making Mr. Obama look foolish, why is it warranted in one case but not in the other?